


how to feel different, how to feel new

by solacefruit



Category: Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: Beta Read, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-01 22:35:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20265598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solacefruit/pseuds/solacefruit
Summary: Cinderpaw’s expression was one Yellowfang had seen many, many times before—on cats’ lovers, friends, the faces of mothers, the fearful warrior about to mentor for the first time. It said:please promise me it’ll be all right.Medicine cats learned early on that it was an impossible promise to give, so they learned what to say instead:I’ll do what I can.





	how to feel different, how to feel new

**Author's Note:**

> _ no-one can unring this bell, _   
_ unsound this alarm, unbreak my heart new. _   
_god knows, I am dissonance,_   
_ waiting to be swiftly pulled into tune. _

Yellowfang noticed Cinderpaw at once when she returned from her afternoon of foraging for borage among the still-unfamiliar trees of Thunderclan’s forest. The young cat was lying in the sun in the camp, but sullenly so, her tail flat and still, her dull-eyed attention lingering on an ordinary twig on the ground nearby. 

It was not what Yellowfang had been hoping to see. She prowled into the medicine cat’s den, dropped the decent clump of borage leaves she’d found, and considered for a moment what to do about it. 

In her time as medicine cat, she’d sat beside every kind of pain and fear the sick and injured could feel: that was the job, after all. Some cats would panic, some cats would plead with their ancestors, some cats would get angry at their circumstances, and some cats would be… resigned. They would accept it, in a quiet, dignified way. It was like they would take every feeling they had that wasn’t this stolid understanding of their fate, wad it up like spider bundles a bumblebee, and tuck it away far and deep inside them. Then they would wordlessly get on with it—whether _it _was the act of living, or dying.

When she was new at being a medicine cat, still learning herself, she had mistaken this calm for peace. She had learned since it was not and what bothered her now was that this calm—the empty kind, the untruthful kind—was radiating from Cinderpaw, and that was never a good omen. Especially not for a cat so young, who was yet to make her path in the world. 

She decided something had to be done, although the actual thought in her head was: _I have to do something_. 

She left the medicine cat den. It was a pleasant afternoon: the sun was still fairly high in the sky and very warm against her dark fur; the light breeze blew in from the thunderpath, whispering through the leaves above. Most of the clan were asleep, it being still too early for a dusk patrol to prepare and too late for the usual mid-morning socialising. The hottest, brightest parts of every day were meant for rest. 

Despite this, Yellowfang padded over towards Cinderpaw. 

Like in Shadowclan, Thunderclan expected apprentices and young warriors to be respectful to their older clanmates. When approached by an older warrior or elder while sunning themselves, it was the custom for a young spry cat to leap up and offer their spot—often quietly confident in the fact that they would rarely, if ever, be taken up on the offer. But it was the tradition regardless, and the absence of the gesture was confrontational.

Cinderpaw, realising slightly too late that Yellowfang was walking towards _her_, scrabbled in the dust for a moment before Yellowfang said, “No need, there’s plenty of light.” She sat down beside her and Cinderpaw flopped once again.

“Hello,” said Cinderpaw. Her injured leg was crooked out to the side, clearly unable to bend much at all yet. Seeming to notice Yellowfang’s inspection of it, she added, “I’m fine today. It doesn’t hurt much.” 

“The sun is good for pain,” said Yellowfang, as a way of agreeing. “Warm muscles hurt less. Tear less, too. You’re sensible to be out here while you’re getting your strength back—but alone?”

Cinderpaw gave a shrug of her shoulders, complicated by her largely flattened posture. “I wanted some space,” she said. Yellowfang could hear the unspoken words: _leave me alone_.

Yellowfang nodded. “Of course. You’ve been through a lot.”

“That’s what everyone tells me,” replied Cinderpaw, barely keeping the exasperation out of her voice. “That, and what bad luck it was to happen to me. Oh, and how sorry _they_ are.” She suddenly seemed to remember Yellowfang was listening and her ears twitched nervously. “Uh. They say it very nicely,” she added. “Everyone’s being very nice to me right now.”

“I should hope so,” said Yellowfang. She paused for a moment. “Something tells me that’s not what _you_ want, though… am I right about that?”

Yellowfang could almost see the thoughts flitting behind the deep blue of Cinderpaw’s eyes, like shiny, sharp dragonflies chasing each other above a pond. After a pause of her own, she said, with a certain amount of caution, “I prefer it to them being _mean _about it.” 

It was a sensible answer to an unexpected question, thought Yellowfang. That was _good_. She would need that in times to come: sensible answers to an insensible, unpredictable world. But _she_ had to choose it. That was the thing. 

“A good answer,” said Yellowfang. “But I think you know what I’m asking? You seem like someone with a lot on her mind.”

Another pause, longer this time. Cinderpaw glanced around the clearing, as if afraid to be overheard by anyone else. The rest of the clan were still sleeping, though: the apprentices piled on one another in one corner of the camp, the warriors stretched in long, overlapping strands of different-coloured fur in every pool of sunlight fallen through the branches above. No-one was listening, except Yellowfang. 

Even still, she spoke in a low voice when she replied. “It’s… hard. To hear all that over and over again, I mean. It doesn’t make me feel better. It makes me feel worse, sometimes.” 

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Yellowfang. 

“I _know _that.” There was blue fire burning in Cinderpaw’s eyes when she glanced up at Yellowfang, then remembered herself and flattened against the ground again. “I didn’t do _anything_ to deserve… this.” She looked away, her gaze trailing to the awkward shape of her leg. “It just happened to me. _Bad luck_.” 

Yellowfang waited. 

“I didn’t do _anything_,” said Cinderpaw, as if holding back a great roar, “but it’s taken _everything_ from me.” She took a breath. “I was meant to be a warrior, you know.” Another breath. “Now I’m _nothing_.”

There were more types of pain than most cats knew. Most knew the pain of a thorn in your paw, a bite in your shoulder. Eventually, everyone knew the pain of someone you loved leaving for Starclan. But some cats, Yellowfang had noticed, knew _this_ pain: just as some feel in their lives the pain of losing an ear or a kit, some cats feel the agony of losing a purpose. 

“You’re a _loud_ nothing,” said Yellowfang. 

Cinderpaw glowered at her but behind the expression, Yellowfang saw her confusion and surprise. 

“What?” said Yellowfang with a chuff. “You thought I was going to say, _poor you_? It sounded to me like you were tired of pity. Tired of everyone wishing you were different on your behalf. Too _nice_, didn’t you say?”

The bewildered Cinderpaw struck out for what seemed to be the safest, angriest topic. “_I_ wish I was different!” Then she glanced quickly around again. Still no movement from the clan, so she hissed, “It wasn’t supposed to go like this!” 

“Who’s to say,” said Yellowfang. “Whatever was supposed to happen, _this_ is what’s happening now. You’re angry and that’s allowed—encouraged, even, a little rage can take you places you wouldn’t dare to go otherwise, I can tell you that—but you’re wasting it in pity for _yourself_, Cinderpaw, when you could be _using_ it instead. You’re _not_ nothing. You’re not over.”

Cinderpaw’s ears flickered, again and again, seemingly torn between being perked in curiosity and flattened in miserable defensiveness. With a clear effort, she fixed them in place, resolutely neutral.

“It’s not fair,” continued Yellowfang. “And you’re allowed all your life to wish it didn’t happen to you. But you’ve still _got_ a life, Cinderpaw, and I think it’s going to be a good one.”

“_How_?” She didn’t sound angry now. There was a note of hopelessness in her voice, the despair Yellowfang suspected was lurking below the calm. “With a leg like this, I’m never going to be a great warrior.”

“I didn’t say it’s going to be the life you dreamed it’d be,” Yellowfang said, more gently than she’d been speaking before. “It might not be a perfect life, not what you wanted, but it’ll be yours and it’ll be a lot more than nothing.” 

“How do you know?” 

Cinderpaw’s expression was one Yellowfang had seen many, many times before—on cats’ lovers, friends, the faces of mothers, the fearful warrior about to mentor for the first time. It said: _please promise me it’ll be all right_. Medicine cats learned early on that it was an impossible promise to give, so they learned what to say instead: _I’ll do what I can._

“You’re strong,” said Yellowfang. “Most cats would have died from what happened to you and yet, here you are, with enough energy left over to glower at your medicine cat not long after. You _think_. That’s always a way forward. You _want_ to find a way to keep going, even like this, I think. And you’re going to have help.” 

Cinderpaw blinked. “Who?” Then she shook her head briefly and sighed. “It’s you, isn’t it? Of course it’s you.”

“You seem disappointed?”

“Well…” Cinderpaw looked wretched for a moment, seemingly searching for the right words. “You’re a medicine cat and I know you’re really good at that but… I don’t think you can understand. I wanted to be a warrior more than _anything_. I wanted to fight for my clan and learn how to hunt, and then teach my own apprentice one day and…” She trailed off. “It’s what I was made to do. Like _you_ were made to be a medicine cat.” 

Yellowfang listened to this explanation, nodding. Then she said: “I was a warrior first.”

Cinderpaw’s eyes widened. 

“Warrior ceremony and everything,” she continued. “Not bad at hunting, not bad at fighting. All right at some other things. Maybe not _great_, but I was there for my clan.”

Cinderpaw shut her open jaw with a snap. “But?” she said. Then tried, “_But?_” 

“Hard for you to imagine giving it up?” asked Yellowfang. 

“Yes!” said Cinderpaw, too shocked to be coy. “Why did you?”

“I got the call,” said Yellowfang. “The medicine cat of the time came to me and asked me, would I give my life for my clan? I said yes at once, of course. I was a brave warrior and I loved my clan. She asked me, _you would give your whole life? Your future?_ And I said, _yes, I’d die for them. Whatever it took_. So then she sat with me and told me, she didn’t want me to die for my clan—she wanted me to live for them for as long as I could and keep _them _living too. It was going to be harder than dying, she told me. It was going to take all the strength I had.”

Yellowfang looked down at Cinderpaw, seeing realisation begin to dawn in those big eyes. “I’m calling _you _now, Cinderpaw. Thunderclan will need a strong medicine cat to take over when it’s my time to leave and you have already proven even a _monster_ can’t take you down.”

Cinderpaw made a strange soft trill, halfway between a startled cry and a purr. 

“I believe a medicine cat should always be able to defend themselves,” continued Yellowfang, “so I’ll teach you how to fight myself, once your leg is a little better. And I think a hunt now and then while we gather the plants we need is only good sense, don’t you think? The clan needs all it can get.”

Cinderpaw struggled to speak for a few moments. “This isn’t what I expected,” she said at last. 

“That’s life,” said Yellowfang. “We don’t often get what we expect or what we deserve.”

They stayed in silence for a little while, Cinderpaw lying and Yellowfang sitting, soaking in the healing warmth of the sun.

“Yellowfang?” said Cinderpaw, with some hesitation. 

“Yes?”

“Would you have asked me, if my leg wasn’t… like this?”

Yellowfang looked down at her. She was a strongly built little cat, square in the shoulders, rounded somewhat in the head, with small but expressive ears. Her pelt was short but dense and her tail was a thicker brush than most short-furred cats. Around her neck, there was the starting of a little ruff, like many Thunderclan cats had; it brought back a memory of being in Shadowclan with other young cats long ago, being warned that the ruff made them a real challenge to bite at the throat. 

But it was really her fur that Yellowfang looked at. It was a magnificent dark grey, so much like her own. 

“Yes, I think eventually I would have,” said Yellowfang. “But not until Fireheart had trained you first. I wanted that for both of you.”

“I wanted that too,” said Cinderpaw quietly. “Can I… ask one more thing?” When Yellowfang nodded, she said, “Why me? Even without the leg… why me?”

Yellowfang considered her options. She decided on honesty. 

“You know I’m from Shadowclan?” she said. Cinderpaw nodded. “I grew up with our lore, from our elders. Over there, we have stories about how cats got their colours, long before Shadow or Thunder founded their clans. We tell a story about how the first grey cats came to be. Dark grey, like we are.”

“We say that grey cats were once black cats—all cats were once black, you see, so the stories go—but all day long they worked in the sun, teaching and patrolling and watching over the clan, so the light bleached their fur like it does with left-out bones. And all night long, in the wind and the rain, they worked in the cold and the wet, hunting and fighting and doing everything they could with every moment they were alive, and the water leached out the black of their pelts until it was faded to grey, sometimes leaving streaks of it still clinging in their fur. Those ones were the tabbies, you see.”

“They worked harder than anyone else and they were… changed for it,” said Yellowfang. “It’s an old story, hardly told anymore,” she added. “But it means something to me. I think you’re the kind of cat who would understand why. I think maybe you’re the kind of cat who would hear that story and_ decide_ it would be true—for you, at least.”

Cinderpaw hesitated for a moment, then nodded.

Then Yellowfang said, “You’ve been changed, Cinderpaw. It’s going to last your whole life and you can’t do anything about that—but you can choose to _make_ it mean something that you’re still alive.”

“If I say no?”

“That’s your choice,” said Yellowfang. “I’m not making a path for you. You have to do that. But I would like to walk with you, if you choose this one.”

Cinderpaw considered this. “You think I can be a good medicine cat?” she asked. 

“I’m certain of it,” said Yellowfang. “You remind me a little of a great medicine cat I know, actually.”

“Who?”

Yellowfang gave her a look. 

“Oh,” said Cinderpaw. “You again.” But this time there was a different light in her eyes. 

“There’s a lot to learn, being a medicine cat,” explained Yellowfang. “Much more than being a warrior. And it’ll be _hard _work, don’t doubt me on that. I’m going to expect a lot from you, Cinderpaw.” 

Cinderpaw nodded thoughtfully. “And if I _can’t_ keep up? You could be wrong about me.”

Yellowfang gave her a long glance, holding back the purr bubbling up in her chest. She considered saying: _an old cat like me? You’ll be running a loop around me in a moon_! But instead she said, “So, decide I’m _not_ wrong. You can do that right now. We don’t get to pick our fate, but we do get to decide who we are when we face it.” 

Cinderpaw held her gaze. 

“A lot to learn, you said?” she asked, finally. 

“Oh, yes. A lot of responsibility. A lot of work. It’s a funny thing—once you start becoming a medicine cat,” said Yellowfang, allowing a gentle rumble of purr, “you find out how much time you have in a day: never enough. Always seems like there’s something left to do.” 

Cinderpaw nodded again. “Probably should start now, then.”

“You’re ready?”

Cinderpaw glanced around at the sleeping campsite and then once more at her leg, still held askew. “Well,” she said, whiskers twitching, “I wasn’t doing anything else today.”

“Get up, th—_no, not that fast_,” Yellowfang added, as Cinderpaw lurched. “A little slower will do, you’re not to be straining that leg too soon, all right? That’s better, your steps need to be good and steady. It’s going to take you a while for that crooked one of yours to heal,” she told the young apprentice beside her. _Her_ new apprentice. “But you’re going to have a lifetime for that.” 

Cinderpaw leaned against her side for support, dark grey with dark grey, and together they padded towards the medicine cat den. “Let’s go get you started,” said Yellowfang.

**Author's Note:**

> _ somehow, all of this mess, _   
_ is just an attempt to know the worth of my life... _
> 
> — Mercury, by Sleeping at Last.


End file.
